Category Archives: humorous poem

Cyber Catastrophies: Sleep on It!!!! NaPoWriMo, Apr 22, 2020

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Cyber Catastrophes

Irritated with your friend
and caring not whom you offend,
after you’ve had a bit to drink,
decide to tell her what you think?

Computer keyboard there in sight,
so you decide it’s time to write
an email, filled with words that rend.
You reel them off and click on “send.”

I cannot stress strongly enough
how much you’ll rue your rude rebuff.
It takes long years to make a friend
but one cruel quip for trust to end.

It’s hard to choke back how we feel,
but arguments on even keel
work better than a sharp retort
after you have had a snort.

So this is the advice I’d give.
It’s easier to just forgive
Than to retract one angry word
after it is seen or  heard.

If you can’t say something nice,
best you take this sage advice.
Before you go and leap on it,
grab a pillow and sleep on it.

For day 22 of NaPoWriMo 2020, we are to create a poem that reflects a well-known idiom. Mine is one my mother used to frequently say, “If you can’t say something nice, it’s best to say nothing at all.”

Shelter in Place

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Screen Shot 2020-04-21 at 1.58.30 PM

The dVerse Poet’s prompt today is the word “flush.” The poem is to be a quadrille—-exactly 44 words, not counting the title.

Solitary Wanderings While Listening to Kottke on Echo

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Solitary Wanderings While Listening to Kottke on Echo

I’m feeling rather whimsical in spite of guidelines given.
Somehow I can’t remain in the direction I’ve been driven.
I have to hitchhike elsewhere to somewhere I have chosen.
When I go where I’m told to go, I wind up slightly frozen.
I’m sensitive to music. Leo Kottke’s playing now.
Alexa found him for me, though I do not know quite how.

I needed background music that would not completely bore me,
so I gave her directions to play some Leo for me.
Then, feeling sort of friendly, and a little low,
when I asked her favorite music, thinking that she would not know,
she said, “Same as most people, it depends on how I’m feeling.”
With “Sweet Emotions” playing, her comment sent me reeling.

Since even cyber entities seem to have emotions,
I need to be more sensitive in my directive notions.
The afternoon is waning and my thoughts are prone to wander.
I wonder what they thought of as they rambled over yonder?
I guess I’ll never know as I am onto the next thought.
That’s why I never do these poems exactly as I ought!!

Prompt words today are whimsical, guidelines, sensitive, music.

A Requiem for Film Cameras

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A Requiem for Film Cameras

I’m sure not a single person’s debating
the merits of digital shots over waiting
a week to see whether the shots that you took
would be found to have merit or found to be crook,
but what is it digital cameras have not
that came with each new role of film that you bought?

Those nifty film canisters everyone got
that were handy for bobby pins, just right for pot,
that held your spare change and were toys for the cat?
Digital cameras have nothing like that!
They held rolls of stamps back when folks still wrote letters,
put sponges in others and they were stamp wetters.

The uses of film canisters knew no bonds.
We’d roll them down sidewalks and float them in ponds.
They’d serve as small coffins for dead flies we’d bury
and kept safe our lost teeth until the tooth fairy
whisked them away in trade for a coin.
(Different rates for each one she’d purloin.)

A dime for an eye tooth and quarters for molars.
They formed doll house tables and substitute rollers
for sisters to use in their ratted up hair.
Who could ever discover them there?
But now that film cameras are all passé,
children, I’m sure, have become more blasé.

They need Barbie Doll suites with push sofas and chairs,
hot curling wands to curl up their hairs,
Technical toys that move on their own,
tooth fairy pouches, intricately sewn.
But what do they use to roll down the bannister
now that technology’s banned the film cannister?

 

For NaPoWriMo 2020, Day 17 We are to write a poem about an obsolete bit of technology.

Love’s Allusions

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Illustration by King Lip on Unsplash, Used with permission

Love’s Allusions

I fear that my Adonis became an Achille’s heel.
His charms were an illusion. He wasn’t the real deal.
His bombastic bearing was one I could not bear.
I plumbed his deepest psyche and found it wasn’t there.

His attempts to woo and win me were perfectly rehearsed,
We were Samson and Delilah, but the ending was reversed!
I was the one who lost my head. Thank god it was not literal,
for when he sought to wield his sword, his target was just clitoral.

My romantic Odysseys give precious little peace.
At times I’ve felt like Jason, seeking the Golden Fleece.
A female Don Quixote, with endless optimism,
If I’d met Dr. Jekyll, I’d have overlooked the schism.

I’ve felt passion ignited via heroes from the telly,
but then found out that my Clark Kent turned into Machiavelli!
My Bat Man became a vampire, which was most disillusioning.
So at least for the present, I swear off romantic fusioning!

I have a feeling that the prompt was meant to be about the illusions of life, but perhaps not, and since the prompt said “life’s allusions,” I took them literally and tried to fit in as many allusions from legend and literature as possible. The allusions are presented in boldface. The theme, however, dealt with my romantic illusions and the rest of today’s prompt words were fit in as well. Prompts for today were: life’s allusions, bombastic, precious, ignite and present.

Ode to Morrie

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Ode to Morrie

Oh you ball of energy, you little ball of fluff.
When it comes to hugging you, I cannot get enough.
Your hair so black and curly, your teeth so sharp and white
that it is an honor when you choose to bite.

Your flair at ball retrieval truly has no equal.
However many thrown for you, you always seek a sequel.
Your eyes luminous marbles, your nails a lovely shape
from running over terraces to stem a squirrel’s escape.

Your hairy little jowls would put Borgnine’s to shame.
So many little mysteries for which you aren’t to blame.
What creature eats the birdseed spread out on the wall?
What other creature has your leap? What other dog the gall?

You give the cats their exercise and what possum would dare
to stray into a garden given to your care?
Oh brave little caroler when interloper passes,
Your mighty barks belie your size. No burglar tests your sasses.

At night you serenade me with your howling croon
accompaniment to ambulances or the rising moon.
My revered alarm clock, my companion after dark,
as now and then throughout the night I celebrate your bark.

Each day I laud thy energy, thy beauty and thy voice.
When I contemplate your dogginess, I cannot but rejoice!
This ode of praise I write for thee, I cannot help but pen it.
If there had been a dog messiah, my dear, you would have been it!


(Click on photos below to enlarge and read captions.)

 

That’s bird seed for the birds, Morrie. Since you knocked their bird feeder down and broke it, it’s the best place for me to see them feeding.
Yeah. Good boy, Morrie. Thanks for cleaning up the birdseed I spilled!!!

For day 16 of NaPoWriMo we are to write an “Over the Top” poem of excessive praise for something.

Also for: dVerse Poets.

Set in Concrete

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Below is a collage of concrete poetry I’ve done over the past six years. Please click on images to increase the size and read the poems.

 

 

The NaPoWriMo prompt is to write a concrete poem. Here are a few.

Plumbing the Depths

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Plumbing the Depths

They call him the professor because of his great wit.
Everything he says has perspicacity in it!
The way he wrangles words should be no great surprise,
for he’s a modern Shakespeare in a plumber’s rough disguise.
Once he unplugs your loo, he is not finished, but instead
he shares a legendary quip to clear out his own head.

Word prompts for the day are: perspiscacity, wrangle, surprise, legendary and professor

Metallica

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For NaPoWriMo Day 7, the prompt is to choose a news headline as the topic for a poem. Here is the news report I chose to write about: “Researchers Discover Faraway Planet Where the Rain is Made of Iron.” I guess you might call this an ironic poem?

Metallica

Use your cook pots for umbrellas, ‘cuz it’s raining iron rain.
I don’t mind heavy metal, but as weather? It’s insane.
The drumming is excessive, and if you can’t take the pain,
you don’t want to be caught out singing in the rain.

If you plan on going wading, I’d have another think,
for the puddles that you’re ogling seem to be full of zinc.
When it snows, most of the snowflakes have crystals made of lead—
not a pleasing prospect when they’re falling on your head.

Oceans full of copper, bronze and steel and tin
may be the place you have to die for to be in.
Silver hills and valleys, rivers made of gold
are all that’s left now that our nature’s all been sold.

Does tungsten please your taste buds? Can you eat the golden calf?
With no leather, those bronze slippers aren’t as comfortable by half.
Aluminum for cooking, some folks think can’t be beat,
but what you use for cooking you cannot also eat!

Now they’ve fracked away our water and melted polar ice,
Mother Nature thinks a world of metal would be nice.
So put away your appetites, for food will be passé
once the plants and animals have all been put away.

Say thank you to our rulers. Say thank you very much
for their self-serving decisions and their Midas touch.
Some of us saw this coming but the others did not see
They were too busy getting their news from Fox TV!!!

Oh dear. I said I wasn’t going to write another political poem. Well, the prompts made me do it. Once again.

Morning Ritual

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Morning Ritual

For NaPoWriMo Day three we are to do pretty much what I’ve been doing every day for the past six years, so I’m combining it with my usual five prompt sites, whose words of the day are: online, lackluster, help, haze and wonder. (When I tried to add five more words to use this for the NaPoWriMo prompt as well, my computer went crazy and the editor turned everything pink and started flashing off and on and erased the first line of the poem, so I guess  WP doesn’t want me to combine prompts, but I’m going to try again. I’ll pick 5 more words at random from sheets of paper scattered on my desk: beginners, solving, developed, warm and milk. Instead of using the rhyming dictionary, I’ll use the one in my head, which works better for me. Okay, here I go again…..)

If your online life’s lackluster, let me help to clear the haze.
It’s no wonder that beginners might feel somewhat in a daze.
Solving all these NaPoWriMo prompts can be a chore.
You develop one poem and next day, must write one more!
Warm wishes I send out to you and others of your ilk.
If I were your mommy, there’d be cookies and warm milk,
but, alas, I’m miles away and locked up in seclusion,
dealing on my own with this confusing ten-word fusion!

online √
lackluster √
help √
haze √
wonder √
beginners √
solving √
develop √
warm √
milk √